Arthur Murray: How to Shag
As a follow up to yesterday’s Arthur Murray post, here’s a clip of the man himself teaching and demonstrating shag. Boy, do those kiddos learn fast or what?
As a follow up to yesterday’s Arthur Murray post, here’s a clip of the man himself teaching and demonstrating shag. Boy, do those kiddos learn fast or what?
Here are some scans from Arthur Murray’s book “How to Become a Good Dancer”. Originally published in 1938, Arthur Murray’s book illustrates the popular ballroom dance steps using the footprint diagrams he developed for his mail order dance instruction booklets in the 20’s.
My edition is from 1942, and the 200+ page book covers general dance technique, Fox Trot, Waltz, Tango, Rumba, La Conga, Samba, and finally, on four piddly little pages at the end, has the Jitterbug and Lindy Hop.
Interestingly, the steps as illustrated are not what you’d learn today in a jitterbug/swing dance class. There are some similarities, but the names of the dances/moves and even where to place beat 1 are different! This is a good reminder that we often view the past through our own experiences, or oversimplify it by thinking that one person’s experiences represents everyone. But this way of thinking about “how things used to be” isn’t usually accurate. If you danced at the Savoy Ballroom you would have one idea of Lindy Hop, but if you took a class from Arthur Murray you’d have a completely different understanding of the dance – both things you could have done in New York in 1938. Is one right and the other one wrong?
It’s time to deal with a couple housekeeping items around here!
First of all, if you click through to my blog here you may have noticed a new little red button on my sidebar – Follow Me on Pinterest. Have you heard about Pinterest yet? It’s like a virtual bulletin board where you can “pin” images you find on the internet, and categorize them however you want. It’s fabulous for collecting and sharing inspiration! You can selectively follow people too – so if you want, you can easily follow my Balboa board but not my Edwardian fashion board, for example. And yes, you can pin YouTube videos!
Secondly, Mr. Tiny over at wacky tacky awarded me the Irresistably Sweet Blog Award! I’m honored to receive the award from someone so talented – not only does he have one of the funniest blogs around, but he also has some amazing creations over at his SouthSideMarket. He also listed me first in his awards, which I like to think means he likes me best. (a girl can dream, right?)
(This is my personal favorite photo from the weekend! 🙂 |